Walter Ornstein Collection

Walter Ornstein (alternate spelling: Orenstein), who trained as a Friseur (hairdresser, barber), established hair salons and cosmetics stores in Vienna and New York. Born 12 March 1900 in Vienna's ninth district (Alsergrund), he was the son of Isak Joseph Orenstein and Franziska, née Singer. Jakob Orenstein (alternate spelling: Ohrenstein) – presumably a predecessor – and Walter's father were also barbers. The Orensteins appear to have come from Tarnow, Galicia, arriving in Vienna in the late nineteenth century. In 1918 Walter completed his studies and was deemed fit for service in the armed militia (Landsturmdienst mit der Waffe). According to his account from 1938, after training from 15 March through 30 April at Bruck an der Leitha he was assigned to guards regiment ("Schűtzenregiment") 24 where he served on the Italian Front at the position Belluno Monte Grappa until the end of the war.

In 1922 he married Hilda Herschkowitz; they set up house in Vienna's second district, Leopoldstadt. Walter opened a hairdressing and shaving business in Neubau, the seventh district, shortly afterwards. Their son Heinz was born in 1925. When they divorced in 1927, Hilda received the business.

Re-establishing himself, Walter followed the path of his sister Elsa and her husband, Mordko ("Max") Fahrer. Max, owner of a Gemischtwarenhandel ("general store") in the first district, registered the trademark "Goubaud" for his cosmetic preparations in 1934. In 1936 Elsa (Ornstein) Fahrer, proprietor of Parfumerie Goubaud, contracted with Israel Morozoff to represent the firm in Paris. Meanwhile Walter opened three hairdressing and shaving businesses in Vienna and, in 1937, registered the trademark "Gaston" for perfumes.

The Sturmabteilung of the N.S.D.A.P. requisitioned Walter's car in April, 1938, shortly after the Anschluss. By September Walter had secured the necessary papers to immigrate and in October arrived in New York. He Wheeling, West Virginia, where he was received by an uncle, Jacques Front. He returned to New York in the spring of 1939. There he re-established the firm Goubaud, with himself as president and Sydney Newman as secretary-treasurer. While setting up this business in wartime New York, Walter served in the City Patrol Corps. On 20 December, 1944, Walter was naturalized as a citizen of the United States. By 1945, he married his second wife, Gertrude ("Trudie") née Goldschmidt. After the war, Walter received compensation for the loss of his businesses following the Anschluss; his brother Wilhelm represented him in Vienna.

Gertrude Ornstein, née Goldschmidt, was born 12 January 1915 in Vienna. During the 1930’s she wrote love songs and appears to have performed vaudeville-like dances, perhaps as an amateur. She may have had a first marriage, in 1932, to someone named Ernst; if so, it appears to have ended in 1933. A frequent dedicatee of her songs, Bronisław ("Benno") Żupnik, spent the years 1936-1937 traveling, mostly through Central Europe, on behalf of his family's Viennese undergarment firm ("Żupnik"). He intended to marry her once he was financially independent. Gertrude left Vienna at an undetermined date and by 1945 was married to Walter and managing Goubaud's retail stores in New York City. In 2011 her family received posthumous reparations from the Austrian government for her wartime losses.